Extinction Horizon (The Extinction Cycle Book 1)

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  Spinoza chuckled. “Speaking of disappointment, kid, remember that chick from Thailand? I mean, you said she was a chick.”

  Beckham laughed with his men and then grew serious. “All right, time to knock off the shit.” They all needed to focus. Get with the program. Comedy was always good to calm nerves before a mission, but this was different. He wasn’t sure what they were going to find in Building 8. And he didn’t trust Noble or Caster. Both men seemed to be withholding vital intel. Their story had already changed once.

  Beckham reached for a handhold as the chopper hit a pocket of turbulence that felt like driving over a speed bump. Typically, they’d be riding on the side of an MH-6 Little Bird, but looking over at Dr. Ellis he could see why Brass had opted for something a bit more stable.

  Beckham patted the vest pocket that contained a photograph of his mom. The thirty-year-old image had been snapped in Rocky Mountain National Park, not far from Estes Park where he’d grown up. He didn’t need to remove the picture to see her curly black hair blowing in the wind or her beautiful smile. He’d memorized it long ago and carried a copy on every mission.

  The flood of memories always calmed his nerves, taking him back to a simpler time, when his biggest worry was making it home before dark. Closing his eyes, Beckham remembered. He remembered his father teaching him how to use a compass and how to rappel off cliffs. He remembered his mother coming home from work dressed in her scrubs after a twelve-hour shift at the local clinic. No matter what time it was, she’d always slip into his room and kiss his forehead.

  Cancer took her when he was a senior in high school, and his career had started with her loss. When he first joined the Army he had felt invincible, naively believing that he would never get injured or watch his friends die. Now, fifteen years later, he’d seen too many of them arrive home in coffins draped with flags. For that reason he had chosen not to marry or have a family. The only people he had to worry about were the men next to him.

  After the chopper straightened, he caught the full profile of his team. The curved outlines of their CBRN suits made them look more like robots than soldiers, but he knew better. They were the brothers he’d never had growing up and more, Horn especially. Over the past few years Horn and his wife had taken Beckham in when his father, too, had passed away from cancer. They’d weathered some tough times together, like a mini-family.

  The rustling passed and Beckham said, “Once we land we will break into strike teams. Panda, Edwards, and Major Noble, you’re assigned to Bravo with Tenor as lead. Everyone else, including Major Caster, is with me. Dr. Ellis, you’re to be my shadow at all times. Got it?”

  A short nod from the doctor, and then Beckham continued, “We will enter the facility with the aid of Majors Caster and Noble. Primary objective is to secure Dr. Medford’s research.”

  Caster cut in. “I should have made this clear earlier, but this is not a rescue mission. If we do come across anyone infected that is still alive, we leave them behind.”

  “Understood,” Beckham said with a hint of reservation. He didn’t like the idea, but then again he didn’t like the idea of the mission in the first place. He wanted to get his men in and out as quickly as possible.

  “Prepare to drop in sixty seconds,” Chief Wright said.

  Beckham lifted his helmet to see the pilot twist the cyclic hard inside the cockpit. The chopper jerked to the right. The Blackhawk rolled slightly onto its side, giving Beckham a quick view of dark waves crashing against the shoreline below.

  The bird straightened out, hovering over the beach as the pilot rotated the cyclic to a neutral position.

  “This is where you get out,” Chief Wright yelled over the whooshing of the blades.

  Beckham flashed the pilots a thumbs-up and said, “Thanks for the ride.” He caught a glimpse of a flicker on the horizon. He knew that somewhere out there a squadron of F-22s waited with weapons systems hot, fully prepared to blow the Blackhawk out of the air if something went wrong.

  Hazardous pay indeed, Beckham thought. Shoving the thought aside, he moved into position at the door. It was go time.

  Beckham flashed a quick hand motion to Tenor, who was crouched by the door. The operator nodded and secured the fast rope to a clip with a loud click. A sea of sand waited for them below. The mixture of sediment churned into a cloud, swirling around the chopper and making it nearly impossible to see.

  Grabbing the nylon rope, Tenor handed it to Spinoza. With a slap he said, “Go, Go!” The man sprang into the darkness with Horn close behind. Riley and Edwards went next. Then Caster and Noble. Ellis hesitated, glancing over at Beckham.

  “Why can’t he just put us down on the tarmac?” the doctor yelled.

  Tenor and Beckham laughed.

  “Military protocol,” Beckham said. “Now jump!” He gave the doctor a soft push.

  Screaming, Ellis grabbed the rope and disappeared into the cloud of dust.

  Then it was just the two leads. They exchanged a glance for a brief moment. They’d made enough jumps to know this one was different. Neither of them knew what awaited them beneath the surface.

  Beckham suppressed the moment of fear and uncertainty. Grabbing the fast rope, he rappelled into the night, hoping—praying—that there was some rational explanation for Building 8 going dark.

  Luck was on their side this night. The full moon provided a carpet of light across the island, illuminating the landscape with a radiant white glow. The team moved briskly across the beach with Beckham at their helm. They fanned out as they pressed on. Their movements were premeditated. They’d done this a hundred times before. Waves slurped in the surf behind them, muffling the crunching sound of their stiff suits.

  “So where is this place?” Horn asked. “How far?”

  A condescending laugh crackled over the comm. “Do you really think the government would have built a secret facility out in the open?” Riley said. “Haven’t you ever heard of the Greenbrier Hotel in West Virginia?”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell,” replied Horn.

  “The government built a massive bunker under the resort there. Kept it a secret for years. It wasn’t until they declassified it that the public knew. If people were fucking in suites above a bunker built to house the President in a time of war, I’m pretty sure they can hide a small facility out here from the public.”

  “Radio silence,” Beckham said harshly, embarrassed his men had not acted with more discipline. He trotted over to Caster, who had retrieved a GPS locator from his pack. The coordinates blinked on the display. Judging by their location, it looked like they had about a quarter-mile to trek. Beckham had been slightly surprised to learn neither of the men had been to the facility, but Riley’s description of the Greenbrier reminded him the government had many secrets. Team Ghost was the perfect example.

  Beckham moved first, climbing up the sandy hill. Over the ridgeline, a lightly traveled frontage road ran along the length of the beach. A loose power line whipped back and forth in the slight breeze. Besides the crashing of the waves, the island was eerily quiet.

  With a few quick hand signals, Beckham broke the group into strike teams. Bravo fanned out across the road and into the ditch on the right, while Alpha trekked toward a series of sand dunes to the left. The landscape was stark and empty; nothing but underbrush and a few sporadic palm trees juxtaposed with the mostly barren terrain.

  Overhead, the moon disappeared under sudden dense cloud cover, and the teams halted to switch on their NVGs. Beckham had hoped they wouldn’t have to use them until they entered Building 8, but with the moonlight gone, they had no choice.

  With the optics active, he now had a hundred-degree horizontal view and a forty-degree vertical field of view. The sight revealed a landscape devoid of life. He slowly swept the optics to the right and then back to the left.

  Nothing.

  Did the animals know something he didn’t? There had to be a reasonable explanation.

  The more he scanned the area, the more he wond
ered. The optics normally picked up even the slightest movement, down to a single critter the size of a mouse.

  Beckham tried to convince himself that they were hibernating or hiding. It wasn’t that cold and surely a few nocturnal creatures would be out scavenging for their next meal. Tightening his grip on his MP5, he shrugged the question away and started up the loose sand of the closest dune. At the top, he had the first good vantage of the entire island.

  To the north, just beyond another cluster of hills, he could make out the airstrip and a collection of buildings. Bringing his MP5 to his visor, he scoped the area below, stopping on a sign at the bottom of the dune.

  NO TRESPASSING—GOVERNMENT PROPERTY

  Balling his fist, he took a knee and waved Caster forward. The man scrambled up the dune and pulled his GPS locator out, studying the screen intensely.

  “We're close. Within five hundred feet of the facility,” Caster said.

  Beckham looked out over the landscape and saw nothing except for an empty road that looked like it led to a dumping ground.

  Chinning his comm pad, he said, “Tenor, you see anything?”

  “Negative, just a large embankment,” Tenor said. “I have a bad taste in my mouth. There’s nothing out here.”

  Beckham listened to the sound of hissing sand. It was freakishly quiet, the kind of quiet that gave him the chills. He used the moment to think. There was simply no way they had the wrong coordinates. He was missing something.

  “Regroup and show me this embankment,” Beckham said. He stood and waved Riley and Horn forward. After a quick peek over his shoulder to check their six, Beckham followed them. They made their way past another series of sand dunes and came to a paved road. Littered in the ditch were mounds of trash. The wind had blown some of it across the area. Plastic bottles crunched beneath the weight of the team’s boots. The sound didn’t bother him. The sight of the trash did. It looked like no one had used the street in days.

  There was no sign of vehicles, no sign of Building 8, and no sign of animals of any kind. What the fuck is going on? Beckham thought. He was used to training Afghani forces or fighting insurgents that he could zoom in on with a red dot sight. This mysterious shit pissed him off.

  Grunting, he followed the curved road through a mass of dirt embankments. The brown hills ended at the bottom of what looked like a landfill.

  “Over there,” Caster said. He held up the GPS device and pointed to a single metal building aged with rust in the middle of the lot. There were no windows, just a single steel door that had the same NO TRESPASSING sign.

  Bravo had already taken up position on the west side of the building. All three men hid in the underbrush, the pointed outlines of their rifles aimed on the steel door.

  “Tenor, get in there and see what the hell we’re dealing with,” Beckham ordered.

  The four men were moving before the sound of Beckham’s voice faded over the net. Spinoza pressed his back up against the building next to Tenor, while Edwards shouldered his tactical shotgun.

  Noble approached the door and twisted the knob. It clicked. Hesitating, the major slowly inched it open and slipped inside the darkness. Tenor waved Bravo inside.

  Beckham checked his watch before motioning his team to follow.

  0435 hours.

  19 April, 2015.

  His gut told him it would be a date he would never forget.

  -3-

  Dr. Kate Lovato paused to study the simulation of a brilliant sunrise filling the east wall of the lobby outside her lab. She’d called the facility home since the first case of Ebola hit Guinea months earlier. The lab was buried deep beneath the surface of the Centers for Disease Control Arlen Specter Headquarters and Emergency Operations Center, or as workers called it, Building 18.

  The artificial rays were really starting to look like the real thing. At least that’s what she kept telling herself. And truthfully, she had started to believe it.

  Funny what working beneath the surface for an extended amount of time can do to a mind, she thought. Kate knew she wasn’t immune to the mental strains of isolation, but it could always be worse. She’d worked around the globe before accepting a position with the CDC a year before. And she’d seen the worst the microscopic world of viruses had to offer: from child Malaria victims during the dead of summer in Sri Lanka to a village in Uganda struck by an outbreak of Yellow Fever. What gave most people nightmares was part of her everyday life.

  She found this part of her work ironic, knowing that several city blocks away the citizens of Atlanta went about their daily routine, most of them blissfully unaware that somewhere under their feet scientists were working with some of the deadliest diseases known to man.

  Only a handful of those scientists were working with the Slate Wiper, as Ebola had been dubbed by the majority of the scientific community. Kate was one of them. She was part of a small team of two other virologists isolated from the rest of the CDC. They even had their own Level 4 biohazard laboratory. It took a special person to want to work on the Slate Wiper Team.

  She took a swig of coffee and approached the glass doors. Even though the lab contained microscopic viruses that could kill her within hours, she’d always felt safe here. The faint hum of the advanced air filtration system designed specifically for the facility reminded her how much the government had spent to ensure what was on the other side never got out. They hadn’t just spent money to keep things from getting out—they had also spent it to prevent the wrong people from getting in. The vestibule connecting the labs required voice and fingerprint recognition. Nothing short of a rocket-propelled grenade was going to bring down the glass wall.

  Kate pressed her finger against the small pad and said, “Doctor Kate Lovato.”

  The door buzzed, the glass panels whispered open, and she stepped inside the room the size of a high school chemistry lab. Three lab stations were centered in the room. Each stretched forty feet in one direction and fifteen in the other.

  She smiled when she spied Dr. Michael Allen’s bald head hunched over a microscope at the farthest station. He was more than the team lead—he was Kate’s mentor and friend.

  Michael was well-known and respected in the international virology community for the advances he’d made in Ebola research. He had been around long enough to have an answer for virtually any question Kate could throw at him. His mind was a wealth of knowledge about the viruses that most scientists wanted nothing more than to stay away from.

  “Good morning,” she said, making her way to her station.

  “Morning,” he replied in his cool, clinical voice.

  “Where's Dr. Ellis?”

  “He’s been outsourced.”

  Kate hesitated before taking another sip of coffee. The caffeine no longer seemed as important. “Outsourced where?”

  “That’s classified. I don’t even know. Nothing to worry about, I’m sure. Typically these are just training missions.”

  “Oh?” Kate asked. “Just a training mission?”

  Michael twisted away from his monitor. Dark purple bags rimmed his hazel eyes. They were deeper than normal, more pronounced. Had he been up all night?

  “Like I said, I don’t know much. The U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases sent the request through late yesterday afternoon. Colonel Rick Gibson called me personally. He’s an old friend, and he said they had to activate their EOC. As you know, protocol is to include the CDC. So I sent Ellis.”

  His response didn’t offend Kate. At thirty years old, she was just happy to be where she was in her career. Not to mention she’d only been working under Michael for a year. Sure she had the credentials, but most of her career she’d spent traveling. Ellis was the obvious pick. What bothered her was the EOC activation. Michael had certainly downplayed it, but she couldn’t help wondering if it had something to do with the Ebola outbreak.

  “Any updates?” Kate asked, changing the subject and taking a seat on the lab stool at her own terminal. She flicked t
he touchscreen and watched the display glow to life.

  “Suit up,” Michael replied eagerly.

  Kate furrowed her brow and swiveled her chair to face him. She knew what the deviation from his sometimes frustratingly calm voice could mean.

  He’s made a breakthrough.

  She didn’t want to get her hopes up, but she could hardly contain her excitement as she prepared to enter the sterile environment of the BSL4 lab.

  They entered the changing room together, or as Kate liked to call it, the space suit room. Four of the special suits hung from the wall.

  She stripped down to her underwear in the center of the room, and Michael aped her action. They’d seen each other like this a hundred times; modesty was not part of the process.

  A few minutes later, Kate was inside her suit. Michael zipped her up from behind and made sure everything was secure. The hiss of cold air sent a chill down Kate’s body as her suit was sealed off. The line swiftly pumped in oxygen. She took in a breath and checked on Michael. He gave her a thumbs up and prepared to enter the lab.

  As he coded in his credentials, Kate felt her muscles tighten. She had handled Ebola samples a dozen times now, but the anxiety that preceded entering the lab never really seemed to go away. She’d seen the effects of the virus up close in Guinea. And even though she knew the chances of infection inside the lab were next to zero, she couldn’t help but think about it each time.

  The trick was not thinking about the virus itself and instead compartmentalizing the work like an office worker would. She aligned each task in order and completed them one by one, carefully and slowly. There was urgency to their job, knowing that every minute they didn’t find a cure was another minute the virus was spreading. But she never let herself think like that. Working with the thought of a gun to her head would only cause an accident.

  Kate joined Michael at the workstation where he was setting up a culture dish. He used a transfer pipette to squirt a sample into the small container. Moving to the microscope, he slid the dish underneath.